


Chain Smoking

by augusta_brie



Category: Aquarian Age: Juvenile Orion
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 16:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8335021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augusta_brie/pseuds/augusta_brie
Summary: Three kisses that are not at all connected, except in the ways they are.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintlysinner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintlysinner/gifts).



Naoya tastes of smoke, and Kaname coughs, chokes. There have been kisses here before, high up on the school roof that they claimed as they’re own back in their first year. But usually those kisses are stolen, or whispered, or pressed in a rushed heat that burns hot and cold and hot again, before it fizzles back into something unsettling and uncomfortable.

Kisses on the rooftop have always been like that. They’re different elsewhere, where the shadows are shadows and light is light, and not this in-between place that the rooftop has always been for them.

This is not one of kisses, fumbled or raw. It’s almost casual – could even _be_ casual, if it wasn’t Naoya and their rooftop and a pair of curious eyes almost daring him to say that sometimes kisses can just be kisses here.

“What the hell was that?” Kaname demands instead, his gaze pointed and fixed on the cigarette still caught between Naoya’s fingers. “You taste of-“

He stops, inhales, tries to capture that taste of Naoya again on his tongue. He tastes the smoke, the bitterness of the nicotine and the fruity after-taste of whatever cheap thrill Naoya is chasing now. He tastes the insistence of Naoya’s mouth, the desperate tug of his teeth on Kaname’s bottom lip as he pulls him open and _breathes-_

Naoya is complex in the light, and he is complex in the shadows. Here, on their rooftop, Naoya is annoying and dumb. And he tastes like-

“Ash?” Naoya offers, his gaze hooded and his smile empty and coy when Kaname takes too long. Naoya has never been good with silences, not when he has already practised the right response a thousand times in his head. 

Kaname snorts, because of _course_. Of course that is what Naoya thinks. 

There is a reason why Naoya smokes, after all. And there is a reason why Kaname snatches the cigarette from Naoya’s fingers and stomps it beneath his foot. 

“Hey-“ He cuts off Naoya’s pathetic protest with a kiss. Just a kiss. It’s short, abrupt. More of a Kaname kiss than a Naoya kiss, even though the hint of smoke lingers between them.

It’s a good kiss, but then maybe Kaname is a little biased.

It is also a very good place to _start._

They’re late to class.

(again)

\---

Mana laughs, and thinks the world is almost perfect. There are orange and black streamers draped across the blackboard and rubber bats strung from translucent string in front of the windows. She laughs, and then tries a cackle, and then laughs again when her cackle is less a cackle and more a ghhahahhahaggraw.

… it is a unique cackle, which is ok. Mana is finding that unique doesn’t mean different or alone or strange or even odd. Not anymore. Unique just means you get to be the you that you are the most at heart, ghhahahahaggraws and all.

She’s spent each break between class cutting out orange pumpkins with Naoya, who is terrible with cutting circles and is therefore responsible for the square pumpkins with the scariest teeth. Then it had been making black cat cookies during lunch with Isshin and Tsukasa, even though they aren’t even in her class and shouldn’t have to be put out by the fact that Mana is in charge of the Halloween decorations this year. 

It would be perfect if they were all here. But this? Mana thinks, her eyes bright when she looks up and sees Kaname there, still in his basketball uniform and his hair wet and ruffled as he leans against the door frame? 

Right now, this is close enough.

Mana is not eloquent, except in ways that others see that are completely incoherent to her. And so, her chair screeches painfully as she rises and she tangles with her desk, and her thoughts, and another desk again as she makes her way over to Kaname and presses a daringly _almost_ -chaste kiss against his lips.

Mana adores the smell of Kaname’s shampoo, and how the scent tickles her nose and makes her skin go all goosepimply. And he tastes, he tastes-

Mana crinkles her nose, and her heart swells. Kaname notices, because he always notices the little things that everyone else seems to miss. How else would he have ever seen Naoya at all, or as deeply and so quickly to the core of Mana’s own heart? There is a shade of uncertainty in his eyes as he pulls back, but Mana just shakes her head with a smile and bounces up onto her toes. She bops her nose against his, and the slight upturn of Kaname’s lips shows that while he still doesn’t understand, that’s ok.

“I take it Naoya got off to his evening job ok?” Mana asks sweetly, and Kaname’s eyes widen a touch in surprise. They narrow then, and Mana knows he’s wondering what wicked, feminine wiles she is using to deduce that a certain someone had briefly been the centre of Kaname’s attention not too long before.

Her smile just widens, all smoke and mirrors.

Some secrets are best kept that way.

(also: she kinda likes the thought that Kaname suspects she might be a magician)

\---

The stage is set. Our lead sits beneath a tall oak, the speckled sunlight freckling her cheeks and spilling down across her tragically karaoke school uniform. There is a peevishly handsome prop-boy standing to the right, his hair improbably perfect but his socks accidently mismatched.

Dim the lights, adjust the spotlight.

Enter: stage left. 

Naoya flops dramatically down into Mana’s lap with a drawn out sigh that would make Shakespearean actors stand up and applaud, tears in their eyes. Mana ruins the effect when she let’s out a half squeal, half oomph, half arag (maths has never been Naoya’s strong point, see: current monogamous relationship of three), and really. And, really. No one should make such cute noises after the day Naoya has had. 

Although…

Naoya closes his eyes as he curls around the natural warmth that Mana manages to emanate simply by existing. And, then. He groans.

Pitifully.

He can practically _hear_ Kaname roll his eyes. He buries his head against Mana’s thigh, smothering away the smirk that threatens to bring down the curtain far too early. That would be a terrible terribleness, especially as it’s so easy to curl inwards, seeking out more and more of Mana’s gentle touch.

Mana – almost, almost! – coos. 

“Ignore him,” Kaname says, completely unimpressed. And, boo. Kaname always sucks all the fun out of things, except when he is sucking in much more interesting ways. Kaname is cold and mean but Mana is an ethereal goddess, and so she ignores the sexy, pouty brute at her side for the handsome yet vaguely pathetic side-kick at her feet.

And, ok. Maybe that’s not quite the image he should be aiming for, but Naoya is nothing if not an opportunist. Mana shushes Kaname, her hands – gentle and soft, nothing like Kaname’s – stroking through Naoya’s hair.

“You look tired,” Mana says sweetly, concerned. Naoya has the perfect response to that, really, one where Naoya is a super hero who conquers 3 evening jobs and a vaguely evil family heritage while leaping over single story buildings and still managing to find a way to convince Kaname to share his homework – all before breakfast. Naoya is good at quick quips, ones that shape the flow of conversation to somewhere lively and fun and safe.

Except … except Mana’s fingers are combing through Naoya’s hair and slowly detangling all the stubborn knots with a quiet intensity that is just so completely and utterly ridiculous, because they’re just knots, and it’s only Naoya, and noone ever-.

Naoya’s tired.

Some days, he’s just so tired. 

And Naoya’s nothing, just one gigantic knot woven too tight that he doesn’t remember what it’s like anymore not to feel so constrained by the world and the terrible people in it.

(they’re not all so terrible, he knows that now, it’s just some days he forgets, and he needs someone – maybe two someones because Naoya is greedy and petty and they’re both so damn pretty – to anchor him in this something new)

He lets Mana work through him, finds himself drifting as she cradles his head. His eyes blink open in a blurry mess when a sudden weight is dropped down across him. Naoya would know that scent anywhere, but Kaname is usually rather special in the way he displays affection. School-jacket-draped-over-your-tired-boyfriend is almost painfully cliché.

Yeah. Well. Turns out painfully cliché looks good on Kaname, although he at least has the sense to look vaguely embarrassed by it.

“Go to sleep, idiot.” The light flush across Kaname’s cheeks suit him, and Naoya hopes that he’s not too tired to remember this later. Kaname’s kissable mouth curls up into a smirk as he drops down beside Mana. “We’ll make sure to wake you up in time for gym.”

Bastard.

Still. Kaname gives off a heat of his own as well, black and dark and smouldering. Naoya’s about to protest the terrible way he is being treated to Mana, but while Mana can be innocent and sweet she has never, ever been a fool. Before he has the chance to speak she bends down and presses a light kiss against his mouth, a smile in her eyes. She smells earthy, clearly having sat out in the sun for far too long. But it is the way Mana tastes that takes him by surprise, a taste so faint that he almost thinks he’s imagining it-

He’s not. 

He’s not.

Something in Naoya breaks, and it breaks in the best possible way.

“You know, I could get cancer from all this second hand smoke,” he murmurs, mumbles really. Mana protests wildly and Kaname laughs, short and hard and beautiful, just like he kisssesss-

Naoya drifts off then, sleeps even. But it’s cool.

(He’ll talk to them both about their dangerous addiction to him when he wakes up)


End file.
